


Galactic Duality

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Bigotry & Prejudice, Biological Warfare, Freedom, Galactic Civilisations, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Machines, Madness, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Robots, Romance, Science Fiction, Secret Wars, Segregation, Slavery, Telepathy, Transhumanism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 03:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More than two hundred years ago, the Galactic Duality of Humans and Machines seeded Earth with telepathy to induct them out into the wider Duality. For the first human and the first robot gifted/cursed with that seed, it was the beginning of a relationship, and a very long and very violent journey towards proving it in the face of the Duality around them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Helping Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Right. Apologies for the long forenote, but this one might take some explaining?
> 
> This is one of my older stories, and I think the last of my major original verses with stuff actually _written_ for them to be moved onto AO3 (Carogne and Dak Territories were the other two). I'm mostly bringing it over for archiving purposes and to have a back-up that's mostly in order. Um. My apologies in advance.
> 
> A few warnings. Firstly, it's old. Five or six years old, in fact. And probably of very questionable quality. Secondly, it's somewhat fragmentary, having been written in dribs and drabs over several months. Thirdly, while it's mostly in order here, it's not exactly a continuous story, more a series of incidents from over 200 years worth of in-story time. Fourthly, if anyone read it on LJ/DW first, several central sections have been reworked for this version, including the original concept piece. Fifthly, it switches between 3rd and 1st Person between some chapters. And sixthly, it ends on somewhat of a cliff-hanger -_-;
> 
> Erm. With all those warnings out of the way ... Good luck and godspeed?

When he finally managed to extricate himself from the enraged human's cell, 29 made certain all the locks were secured on the door, and allowed himself a moment to slide down against the wall and get his composure back. It was ... difficult, especially once he raised his hand to the optic the human had managed to tear open in sheer desperation. He could feel it, the lens hanging slightly free from the metal casing, the articulated plating of the eyebrow above it hanging skewed and loose. His vision was halved, when he shut off the feed from that optic, but it was that or make himself dizzy as it swayed crazily over his cheek.

Days like these, he really wished there was more than just him left, in this place of rotting minds and desperation. 29, he'd been. Only 1, now. 1, and thirty-six human prisoners. Patients, officially, but ... well. No hiding from the truth of that, not here.

With a crackle of a sigh, he heaved himself back to his feet, ignoring the queasy feel of his eye bumping off his cheek. It hurt, some, a faint but persistent knowledge that he'd been damaged, that he needed to see to it, but it wasn't incapacitating, as such. At all, really, unless he was attacked again. And his last check-up today ... no. That one would not attack him.

For a moment, 29 didn't care. He wanted to go back to his workshop, to fix his eye and hide for a few hours, until the dusk patrol. Just hide, away from the screams and cries and harried conversations to empty air, the pleas and whimpers and furious insults. Just for a few hours. Just for a while. The last one could wait, surely. Surely he could ...

But no. No. He couldn't. Or rather, 29 couldn't let him. Damn his conscience anyway, that niggling little thing that he wasn't actually supposed to have but couldn't seem to be rid of, but he couldn't leave the last man alone.

\---

The human was curled up _on_ the bed, for a change. That was always a good sign, with this one, who had a tendency to burrow when distressed. Hah. Distressed. Such a mild word, for what 29 saw in this cell, in all these cells, when the fear came crawling up. But that was besides the point. Today, the human seemed calm.

29 studied him for a moment from the viewport on the door, turning his head so his usable eye was forwards. The human was pressed into the corner of the bed in the lee of the window, where there was always some shadow. He didn't like the light, this one. It terrified him. His arms were wrapped around bony knees, his stout form seeming somehow small and fragile, crumpled. There were tear-tracks on his face.

There almost always were.

He'd seen enough. Enough to know it was safe to enter, even damaged, and enough to know he'd been right not to forget this one today. If only because days like these, when the human was calm, when the light didn't seem too terrible to him ... days like these 29 could see something inside the human of what he must once have been. And he liked those little glimpses. He liked what he saw there.

The human looked up at him as he stepped inside, pale blue eyes focusing with a glimmer of lively intelligence that was missing on the bad days, drowned behind fear and pain. Today, though, the fear was only a faint shadow on the edges of his gaze, the pain a distant stormcloud behind fair skies.

My, he was poetic today.

Then, suddenly, the human gasped, causing 29 to stiffen, and struggled to his feet, coming towards 29 with in a clumsy stagger that failed him just as he reached his destination, and 29 reached out hurriedly to catch him before he fell. The human smiled up at him in gratitude, and he found himself turning his blind side to that expression, hiding the spike of feeling it drove into his gut. This human was about the only one who ever showed him an expression like that. An expression outside of pain or fear or hate or contempt or rage. He wasn't quite sure how to deal with it.

"Are you alright?" he asked, coldly, to cover his confusion. The human regained his feet, shaking his head in what looked for all the world like exasperation, or some pale copy of it. 29 blinked at him, wincing when his eyelid caught on the damaged lens and wrenched free badly.

"I don't think I'm the one you should be asking," the human rasped mildly, resting a trembling hand on one cocked hip in a strange facsimile of jest. It wrenched at 29 more than the pain in his eye.

"I am fine," he countered, stiffly, wondering at the urge he felt to wrap the human in an embrace, shaking his head to dispel the notion and cursing as his optic swayed. Damn it, this was just ridiculous! The human apparently thought so too, if the snort of pained laughter was anything to go by. 29 glared out of his usable eye, and huffed in annoyance, but all that got him was a bright, faded grin.

"You're a bad liar, you know that?" the human observed softly, and took 29's hand, leading him to the bed while he was still staring at their linked fingers in bemusement. Before he quite understood what was happening, he was seated on the edge of the cot, and the human was standing over him with his fists on his hips, leaning in to squint at the damaged optic. 29 almost recoiled under the scrutiny, but forced himself to be still when he sensed no harm in it.

"Have an interest in mechanics, do you?" he asked waspishly. The human quivered, but covered with a challenging snort of his own.

"Hush up and let me see if I can do anything with this," he growled, reaching up slowly and hesitantly to let his hand hover over the blind side of 29's face. "If ... if I may, that is?" And there was a quaver of fear in there, the whisper of a spirit used to being battered, and before he knew it 29 found himself nodding, letting the stubby, shaking fingers gently explore the metal around his damaged optic, the dented curl of his eyebrow.

It was ... a strange sensation. He didn't think anyone had ever touched him like this before. Not gently, with the kind of soft fascination he could see in this human's face. It quieted something inside him, that feeling, that expression, and not even the twitch of pain as clumsy fingers brushed exposed nerves could dent that calm.

"I can repair myself, you know," he commented softly, gently, not moving beneath the hesitant exploration. "I do it all the time." The hands went still for a little minute, washed-out blue eyes meeting his remaining optic, a depth of sadness and compassion in them that had 29 shaking himself, little tremors of confusion and ... something a little like hope, he thought, though he honestly couldn't have said what it was he found himself hoping _for_ , not then. All he could have told you then was that he felt it.

"I know," the human whispered, the words scratching free of a raw throat. "Doesn't mean you should have to." 

And 29 had no answer to that. None at all. So he stayed quite, and watched the human's face as he squinted and grunted and traced the edges of the damage, lifted the optic carefully to see if it could be fit back easily. It could, as it happened. 29 could have told him that. But it seemed ... better, to let him figure it out himself, to let him work and help and not focus on the fear and madness that hovered ever-present in the darkness behind his eyes, in the light beyond the window. 29 wondered, sometimes, what it was like, living with that, living that way. If it could be called living ...

"Hey, have you got something thin, that I can tweak these connections with?" He started as the human spoke again, blinking with his good eye, realising he'd been somewhere else entirely and bringing himself back to reality with a start. He looked up at the human, at the scrunched expression of worry and concentration on the tear-stained face, and nodded mutely, slipping his small repair kit out of the compartment under his chest plate. The human stared a bit, then accepted it with a shrug, and got to work in earnest.

29 bore it stoically for a few minutes, ignoring the little shoots of pain, until it became apparent that the human, admirably focused though he might be, was shaking far too badly to actually manage the task he had set himself. 29 could feel his optic being pulled jerkily into place, and realised that if left alone the human was going to set the lens crookedly. He reached up to catch a wrist, pull the hand gently away from his optic, but then, to his shock, the human _slapped his hand away!_

"Excuse me ..." he said, heavily, prompting the human to look up.

"What?" the man responded, testily, and 29 blinked at the temper, actually stunned. This human didn't _get_ angry, or annoyed, or anything outside of terror or blank misery. This human ...

"You're doing it incorrectly," he snapped anyway, ignoring his confusion for the moment in favour of retaining a working optic. "Do it that way and you'll leave me with a lopsided eye!"

"You already _have_ a lopsided eye!" the human barked back, withdrawing his hands so he could prop them on his hips, glaring. "In fact, you've an eye hanging around your neck! Now hush up and let me fix it!" And he reached forwards again, his hands bumping into 29's as they came up to intercept, batting furiously in what quickly descended, to 29's bemusement, into a slap fight.

"Listen ..."

"Look, if you would just let me ..."

"Don't do ..."

"Hell in a handcart! Just let me fix the damn thing!"

"NO!"

The human froze, a quiver running up through his spine as fear flared in his eyes at the sharp and implacable tone, blunt fingers snapping back away from 29's face. 29 winced, sorry now for snapping, but he did _need_ that optic, after all ...

"I'm sorry," he said, softly. "But you've done enough. I can handle it from here, you know." The human nodded jerkily, shuffling backwards. "No, listen," 29 called after him, then growled in frustration when he realised he had no idea what to call the human. After nine months, he still had no idea of the man's name. Humans didn't answer to numbers, which was all he knew. 0. Patient zero. And that was wrong. "Listen," he repeated, looking directly at the human. "I ... thank you. I don't ..." He growled again, shaking his head in frustration. "People, humans ... I can do it alone. I can do it myself."

And that quickly, the fear faded back in the human's eyes, and something softer replaced it. Compassion. Sympathy. Understanding. And he nodded gently to 29, and smiled a faint and battered smile. "Alright. Alright."

It felt like a slap in the face, and 29 dipped his head, looking down at the hands in his lap, metallic and gleaming, and he noticed with shock that there was a hint of blood on them, not from earlier, from the attack, because he had cleaned that in the hall, but from _here_ , from this human ... he looked up, seeing a torn knuckle on the human's hand, realising the edges of his joints must have caught and torn at the softer human hands while they wrestled, and he hadn't even noticed, hadn't even _realised_ ...

"Hey? Are you alright?" the human asked, coming in again to kneel in front of 29, biting his lip as he looked up at him. 29 stared, agonised, and reached out on something like instinct to take hold of the damaged hand, rubbing the pad of one metal finger over the wound, watching as the human looked down, blinking in surprise. "Hey. I didn't notice that," he said, baffled and innocent, and 29 felt something jagged bloom in his throat.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, holding that fragile hand gently, cradling it, and wishing for one fierce, incandescent moment that he knew how to fix it, how to fix all of it, how to take away every wound on those blunt hands, in those faded eyes that leaked tears in the shadows while the light prowled the room. "I'm so very, very sorry."

"Hey. Hey." The human looked almost panicked, his free hand coming up to pat desperately at 29's shoulder, rubbing in worried little circles over the plating of his shoulder. "It's okay. I'm sure it's okay. Just a spot of blood, you know. Just a bit of a cut. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all." His voice was soft and rasping, worried and baffled and compassionate, and 29 rather thought, just for a moment, that he loved the human. Just a little bit.

"I ... I don't even know your name," he whispered, helplessly, looking up at the grey, stained face with a kind of desperate, possessive hope, and the human smiled a little, a hesitant little grin that said he wasn't quite sure what was going on, but that at least he could answer.

"Dowling," he said, smiling. "Name's Dowling." He frowned a little, casting around for something, but whatever it was wouldn't come, so he put it aside with a shrug. "Used to be more to it, I think, but it's all gone now, so Dowling'll have to do, I'm afraid." He smiled sheepishly, like the holes in his memory were his fault, and 29 found himself reaching up, tugging the man gently forward into a hug, finally giving into the urge to hold him, to just hold him, this soft and fragile little human who smiled at him in gratitude and tried testily to fix his eye and panicked when he had to comfort someone. This silly, impossible, crazed human.

"Isander," he whispered, so soft it was almost inaudible, his deepest, most treasured secret, the name he'd taken for himself when he realised he was more, so much more, than his creator had intended. His little blasphemy, his tiny stake on personhood that no-one in all the world would grant him except himself, and maybe, just maybe, this man. This madman. "My name is Isander."

And Dowling pulled back a little, and smiled at him, bright and faded and mad and happy. He smiled, and reached down to grasp Isander's hand, and shake it, firmly, like he would another human's, another person's.

"Pleased to meet you, Isander! Very pleased to meet you!"


	2. Sensation

Gestalt. The word sang through him, a smooth, spidery concept that whispered and invaded, a name for the connection he sensed around him, for the sea of Light that humanity had become. A name for the thing that had crawled inside his mind, that had infected him and then everyone around him, the curse telepathy dragged behind it. A name ... for the humming Earth. 

He sank inside it, in the confused maelstrom of incomprehending minds, of identities lost and swapped and thrown away. It was almost all he knew, now. Almost the only thing that was left. Humanity sank away inside the disease, telepathy run rampant, and he sank with it, maddened, terrified, clinging to things that were no longer there, to a world he'd been torn from more than three years ago.

Madman, they'd called him. He'd been the first to feel it coming. The first to start sensing things that shouldn't be sensed. The first to be touched by telepathy's creeping fingers. They'd called him mad. Still did. But for the way the Light stretched around him, for the way he felt it grow and hunger and move, he thought perhaps he might be the last _sane_ man left.

Still. It was madman they called him. The old whisper, the old name, inside his head and those closest to him, the jailors, the keepers. Madman, in their thoughts. Mad _men_. Fear. Disgust. Confusion. Hate.

Gestalt. That which hates itself.

And then, abruptly, something shattered. The Light roared and whispered and howled around him, clawing at him, pulling him down, and then, suddenly, it retreated. Something broke inside him, the thing that held him trapped within the light, and suddenly there was more than Light to the world once more. Something gripped his arms, chill, strong. Metal, a harsh grip on the body he'd forgotten he had, on the form that existed outside of the gestalt, outside of the light.

"Dowling."

Dowling. One word, metallic and flat, with none of the rich texture of the mind-words, the concepts. Just language. No connection. But meaning. So much meaning. Dowling. It was his name. And behind it, rising in his mind, came another.

"Isander," he rasped, gasping and shuddering as he surfaced from the light, surfaced back into the real world, the world of form and action and identity. Isander's world.

"I'm here," the robot said, gently, his arms wrapped close around Dowling's torso. "I'm here, Dowling. I have you." And he did. He did. Dowling could feel him, chill metal and warm voice, sharp angles and beaten curves. The feel of scratches made by desperate hands on Isander's body, the tang of metal in the air, the crackle of electrical nerves loud in the silence of his cell, matched only by the sobbing of his own breath. Real. All real. Shameless, Dowling clung.

"They're sinking," he whispered. "Into the light. They're all sinking, Isander. Even me." He gasped a little as steel fingers came up to curl around his head, to rest cool and calm against the raging heat inside his mind, to push back the light with the strength of their reality.

"No," said Isander, softly. "Not you. Not you, Dowling. I have you."

And he did. For more than two hundred years afterwards, he did.


	3. Never Show Your Hand

Isander looked at Dowling again. He couldn't help himself. Though a very large part of his logical mind was crying out at the foolishness of it, he kept expecting the human to disappear at any moment, to be swept up and taken away, taken back to ... No. No. Dowling wasn't going back there. Not ever again. Isander didn't particularly care how many humans thought the man insane. They had left the Asylum behind, and he intended to keep it that way.

All he had to do first was convince his creator to let him.

His eyes tracked back to Dowling again, just looking at him as they waited for her. For them, maybe, and Isander really wasn't looking forward to that being the case. Even if he wasn't programmed, somewhat inescapably, to obey his creator in all things, he doubted he could fight all of them.

Dowling, certainly, couldn't fight off a fly at the minute. He was too close to the edge. The Gestalt was moving towards them. He could see it in the man's eyes, in the blown terror lurking just beneath the surface, beneath blade-thin determination. This was their last chance to get him away, before the thing came and swallowed him, and every other human in this part of the world. They both knew that.

Dire as those considerations were, though, he couldn't help studying the man. Dowling. The madman. And here, in this opulent office, in this restrained and clean space, he certainly looked the part. Against the tidy, well-fed humans that they'd seen since coming here, Dowling looked like some ridiculous crumpled scarecrow, windblown and creased, his movements twitchy and shying at the light, wild and faded. He looked ... frail. The sight tore at the soul Isander wasn't supposed to have. But bugger that anyway, as Dowling would have said.

She entered, then. He heard her before he saw her, the swift click-clack of heels, the swish of well-cut cloth. Dowling stiffened, fear spiralling in his eyes as he met Isander's, but then he nodded. Carefully, slowly, like he was afraid his head would fall off any second, but he met Isander's eyes and nodded carefully.

What they had suspected was true. Dowling could sense it in her. Very slowly, almost wickedly, Isander felt himself begin to smile, a smile he shoved back and hid instantly, but a smile nonetheless. And he caught the look in Dowling's eyes at the sight of it, and his soul took a little leap.

He wondered if he would ever not feel that surge of pride when Dowling looked at him with admiration.

But then, it was time for business. She looked at them, cold and clean, staring contemptuously past Isander like he wasn't even there, looking down her nose at the shaking figure Dowling made, kneeling on her floor. Shackled to it, and Isander had almost attacked then and there, when they put those things on him, but for once Dowling had remained the cooler head and hurriedly gestured _no_ at him. Not a word. Never a word. Who needed telepathy, anyway?

"You will tell me the meaning of this, 29," she demanded, turning to him at last. He met her eyes emotionlessly, seeing nothing in them to connect to, nothing in them to admire or fear. She had made him. But that meant nothing now.

"He is not insane," he responded mechanically. "Telepathy has not been listed under any known mental illness. I have no cause to hold him."

She sneered at him. "And since when are you programmed to diagnose, 29? Since when it is your decision to hold them or not?" _Since you sent them to me, to my care_ , he thought, but did not answer. Not yet. Her lip curled at him as she went on. "This man has been declared insane by at least three separate authorities. Authorities I would trust far more than ..." She smiled nastily. "Than a _machine_. Now take him back, and stop wasting my time!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Isander saw Dowling flinch, a shudder that ripped through him to his bones, and he ruthlessly quashed the need to go to him, to comfort him. Not yet. Not yet. Dowling didn't understand yet. He didn't know why Isander had asked him to look at her mind, to see who she was. Until he did, he would have to be afraid that little bit longer, no matter how much it hurt them both.

"I am afraid I cannot do that," he answered her, colourlessly. She had been turning away, confident in his obedience, and she spun with something very close to a snarl on that dignified, mask-like face. He wanted to smile at that, at that evidence of some emotion inside her beyond contempt, but refrained.

"And why not?" she spat, coming around the table towards him, but he was already moving. Testing. She had told him to stand and be still, ordered him. He shouldn't be able to disobey. But he stepped around her as she came, moving to Dowling's side, meeting his eyes with a faint smile as he knelt and snapped the shackles between his fingers, carefully, so as not to hurt the human. Dowling stared at him, fear and admiration and humour and something ... deeper ... vying for space to show in his eyes. Isander had no idea how to react to that, so he settled for helping the aching human to his feet, wrapping an arm around his shoulder protectively.

Then she was there, spitting in fury, and one hand with nails like claws seized hold of his face, scoring marks into the softer metals of his articulate features. He didn't flinch. Didn't react. Only stared coldly at her, every inch the emotionless machine she thought him to be.

" _What_ do you think you're doing," she hissed. "How _dare_ you disobey me! You have no will, you pathetic lump of metal! You'll do as I say this instant!"

He was silent for a long second, wondering how to phrase it for best impact, and in that moment Dowling took the opportunity to speak up, the first time he had dared since leaving the walls of the Asylum behind. "You know," he drawled, slowly and consideringly, his eyes warm on Isander's scratched face. "I don't think he will." He smiled, then, a dazzling grin meant for Isander and Isander alone, and Isander would happily have jumped on a bomb for him. "I really ... really don't think he will."

"What do you know!" she spat, reaching out towards Dowling, as if to strike him, claw him open as she had Isander. "He _obeys_ me! He has no choice!"

And then he had her arm in one metal hand, pulling it back from his precious human with perhaps a tad more force than was strictly necessary, and met her suddenly panicked eyes with his own implacable ones. "No," he said, softly. "I _had_ no choice. Not while you were still my creator, my mistress. You could have ordered me to kill him, and I would have obeyed." He felt Dowling shake a little, at that, and leaned close in sudden fury. "But not anymore," he whispered, viciously, tonelessly. "Because you _are no longer my creator._ "

And she wasn't. Not with the taint of the Gestalt seeping into her mind, not with the collective psyche of half of humanity infecting her thoughts and reactions. The moment Dowling had nodded to him, having found the impossible courage to actually venture into another mind on purpose, against all the terror it inspired in him ... in that moment, Isander had known they were free. Had known _he_ was free. He was programmed to obey Anita Cole, his creator. Not the Gestalt.

And now they could bloody _try_ to keep him from spiriting his beloved human away, from keeping him safe, from making sure that Dowling never, ever had to set foot in that Asylum again. They could just try.

"Hey, Isander?" Dowling whispered, as Isander half lead, half carried him from her office. Isander. His name. Not 29. Isander looked down at him, at the wet gleam of admiration and love in those tired eyes.

"Yes?" he asked, as gently as he knew how. Dowling grinned at him, then, bright and irrepressible and brave, mischief in every crumpled line, and Isander found himself grinning back, helplessly, conspiratorially. To all the rest of the world he could hide his smiles, but not this man. Never this man.

"How the bloody _hell_ did you manage that?" Dowling managed, after a moment, still grinning like the loon he was. Isander paused for a moment, thinking about it, wondering what to tell, how to explain, and then he looked back at those laughing eyes, the mischief in them under the fear, and smiled suddenly.

"I couldn't possibly say," he answered blithely. Never show your hand, the mischief-maker's motto, and with this man ... that's exactly what he was allowed to be, wasn't it? Not the emotionless machine, programmed to obey, to answer every question. But Isander, who was entitled to his own wicked urges, who could grin and pretend he had no idea what the human was talking about. He could do that.

And Dowling looked at him for a long second, his eyes crinkled and piercing beneath a thoughtful frown, long enough for Isander to wonder if he should regret the game, and then ... Then Dowling laughed. Rasping, voice still broken from years of screaming, but a good, clean laugh, full of dark humour and honest joy.

"Of course not," he managed, smiling up at Isander. "Of course not."


	4. Korundai (Dowling)

We were on an island when it happened. A small island, self-contained. I think that's how I knew. How I finally understood. I was an idiot, back then. Still am, maybe. I should have realised long before then, before that. Maybe ... maybe I did. Maybe I knew before the Asylum. Maybe that's why I let them take me. If I let them take me. But before the full panic, surely they wouldn't have just seized me? Just picked me up and thrown me away? Earth wasn't like that, was it?

Damn. I wish I could remember. But there's nothing. Nothing before the Asylum, and the dreams of Light. By the time I had both things to remember _and_ the ability to remember them, the Gestalt had already been born. I'll never know if once upon a time I saw it coming, if I knew what it was I was doing to them. To Earth.

Isander was with me, when I learned. We'd been running, by then, running for a long time. I think it was years, since we'd escaped, since he had freed me. Since he had given me back to myself, at least physically. Damn. He was magnificent then. Truly magnificent. Even if it led to what happened next, I don't think I'll ever, ever regret seeing him that day, seeing him free the both of us in one masterful gambit, seeing him become a person in the eyes of the one who'd made him. Maybe that makes me a monster, but I've always loved him more than I cared for those around us.

He was with me, on that little island, that little refuge we'd made. He'd found it, actually. I just told us what to run _from_ , feeling the Gestalt like a storm on my back. He was the one who found us places to run _to_. However briefly. And it was always brief. I can't believe it took me that long to figure out why.

It was the eyes that did it. That showed me, _finally_ , how stupid I was, how selfish, how monstrous. Running ahead of the Gestalt, I thought. Stupid. I was _leading_ it. No. I was _making_ it. Patient zero. Typhoid Mary. How stupid can a man be? Because I was. Dammit, but I was!

There were people, on that little island. A tribe, a community, hell if I know. They had a name. The island had a name. I can't remember what they were. I can't even give them that. All the holes in my mind, I can't even give them the honour of remembering who they were before I remade them, destroyed them. I can't remember who they were when their minds were just buzzing on the edge of mine, unique, individual, distinct. I can't give a name to what they were. Only what they became, because of me.

Gestalt.

I knew, when they changed. When I felt them start to blur, to seep into each other. When the screams started, the terror as telepathy hit, as they starting sensing things they couldn't understand. Isander knew then too, but only because of that. He couldn't feel them. He couldn't sense what I sensed. He could feel them brighten and glow, the Light come home, and then connect, seep, begin to lose definition ... He couldn't sense that. He didn't know. But he knew when I realised. He saw when I understood, even if he didn't know what or why. He saw my ... my horror, my shame.

They became Gestalt. But it hadn't come for them. It hadn't followed us over the sea. I knew it hadn't, because I could still feel it, distant and humming like a storm just over the horizon. It never came for them, never followed me. It never had to.

I saw it in their eyes. I saw it, when they started to see beyond what they should, when they became distant, staring beyond me while I handed them money for groceries, staring into me at something behind my eyes. I saw it, when that long stare became unfocused over time, when they stopped really realising it was me, when they stopped really realising there was such a thing as 'me' at all.

I saw it when their eyes stopped seeing altogether. Blank and blind, because there was no longer a mind behind them, because the minds had gone somewhere else, drifting over the sea to join the Light beyond the horizon. I saw it when they became Gestalt.

And for the first time, I saw why.

Isander found me. He always found me. When the Light came, and I had to run, to hide, to dig myself into a hole in the ground and cower against the screaming. He'd found me when I was hiding under the bed at the Asylum, and in all the years after, no matter where I'd run to. He'd found me. But that time, he hadn't even had to look.

He sat next to me, just in a heap in the middle of the market place. Sat next to me in stillness while bodies made their way unceasing around us, carrying out day to day chores, eyes blank and unseeing, unfocused, lost beyond the horizon. He sat next to me, and shielded me from view when the Gestalt turned its many faces and met my horrified stare. He tucked my  
head into his shoulder, and glared at people who no longer had a name.

"Dowling?" he asked, gently, as if he wasn't holding a monster, as if I was someone worth being gentle to. "Dowling, I think it's time to leave." To run, again, run ahead of the storm, stay free of the Light, stay me. No matter the cost. Except I hadn't realised, not until right then, exactly how high that cost had been.

I stayed me, stayed Dowling, only because everyone I touched was lost. Every time we moved, went to another place untouched by telepathy ... I was spreading it. Infecting them. My curse. My screams. The storm at my back. I was throwing it at them, to keep it from touching me.

The Gestalt, everything I was running from, everything I hated and feared, was something I had made. Something I was making, and kept on making, every time I touched someone new, every time I ran where I hoped it wouldn't follow. It was my fault. It was all my fault.

I think I might have screamed, then, a mewling little sound in a throat I've long since lost. Wrapped in Isander's arms, cool metal and calm, face buried against the gleam of his shoulder, I started screaming. Shaking. I remember the sounds. I remember the sounds I made, and I can't even remember their names. That's what kind of monster I am. I remember him holding me, remember him soothing me, crooning, hard and soft and _there_ like nothing else had ever been, has ever been, and I remember feeling comforted, feeling loved, while all around me everything I touched turned to dust. I remember that.

I don't think I ever told him what happened that day. Not out loud. I don't think I ever explained what I'd seen in those unseeing eyes. But he knew anyway. Or suspected. Maybe he knew all along. He remembered why I'd been sent to him, after all. He remembered the reasons they'd given when they locked me away, all those years before, back where my broken mind wouldn't go. Maybe I'd even told him, back in the early days before we meant anything to each other beyond prisoner and jailor. Isander's always had the most precise memory.

He knew. After that. He knew, and I knew. And we kept on running. Even knowing. We kept on. Touching and spreading, because the thought of staying, of meeting eyes full of an intelligence that didn't belong there, that wasn't meant to live there ... I couldn't bear it, and he couldn't let me. He loved me too much, even then. And I was too weak, even then. We kept running, until there was nowhere left to run. Until the Gestalt held the whole world in a blind stare, and all I could do was cling to him, cling to the immutable metal, and try not to look at what I'd made. At what I'd done.

They call us _korundai_ , now. Abominations. They call us that because we dared to love past the bounds between races. They call us that because we decided to break ourselves, instead of a world. Break ourselves, remake ourselves, and hold each other through the breaking. They call us abomination for that, and _rewarded_ me for what I did then. Granted me life, a body, a way off Earth, all for spreading my disease. All for bringing telepathy to Earth, and bringing them out into the Duality.

They're as stupid as I ever was. Maybe that's why I don't care. Maybe that's why I don't mind what they call us. _Korundai_. Abominations. We are. We are that. But not for the reasons they think, and if they can't figure that out I'm not going to care. If they're so stupid that they reward monstrosity and condemn love, I'm not going to regret what I've done. Not any of it. Monster I may be, monsters we both may be, but no worse than them. No worse than them, and at least we have courage enough to see it, and love each other in spite of it.

Isander knew. He knew, all the time, back then, what I was and what I was doing. He knew the monster he held, and loved me anyway. And I knew too. I knew when I looked up at him, that day in the market on a lonely little island. I knew that he knew, and that he had chosen anyway. Chosen me, chosen the monstrosity, and let the world hang for my sake. A monster made of love. And I loved him for it. I love him for it.

Let them call us what they like, then. So long as I have that, I don't care. So long as I love him, and he me, the galaxy can go hang. He made the choice then. I can make it now. I didn't understand, back then. How he could choose me over them, how I could be worth a world. I do now. I do, because it's him, and he's worth a hundred thousand galaxies to me.

That is how a monster, an _abomination_ , loves.


	5. Trembling (Isander)

He was old, when we went out among the stars. Dowling. He was old. Eighty years together, by then. Eighty years of Asylum and running, of Gestalt, of the confusion and panic and relief when it broke, of the restarting of society after it all. Eighty years, and however many he'd had before the Asylum. By the time we made it to space, he was old. Humans made bodies to last even then, with medicine and technology, but still. They were hard years. They showed. I'll never forget how much.

He does, you know. Forget. To him, bodies are ... they're beautiful and joyous and sensual, but functional too. He sees them in terms of what they can give him, and what he needs to do for them. Whether he looks good or not honestly never crosses his mind, unless he has to go to an interview or something, and people are fussing at him. 

Though he does look at me. He looks at me. That being said, I could be rusted, corroded and shaped like a spider, and he'd probably still think I was beautiful. He's a little blind that way.

Anyway. He was old. When we joined the Duality. When I fell. Telepathy. 

Because there were machines, out there. The Machine Unity, the second of the two great societies that formed the Galactic Duality. They ... touched me. As it turned out the Human Unity had touched Dowling before me, as it turned out they had _planted_ him, on Earth, to go mad and spread telepathy across the planet. As the human unity had touched him, so then did the machines touch me. First Earth machine out, with the first Earth human. Practically thrown off the planet, we were. And we hit ... them.

I remember he was old. I remember it because his hands, they used to shake. When they held me down, when they wrapped around me. They'd shake. And his eyes. They were all crinkly. Blue. So very blue. They always looked a little wild, under that storm of white hair. His eyes were wild, and his hands shook, and I remember thinking, sometimes, in the clearer moments, how glad I was that he was human. That I couldn't feel whatever emotion of his made him tremble like that, whatever coursed through him so strongly that his body couldn't hold it in. He was so ... old. So frail. So damned powerful.

There was a female, an organic machine. She was sent to help me. They hadn't realised Earth had machines. When they did ... let's say the Machine Unity was somewhat more considerate than the human one. If the humans knew what they were doing when they sent telepathy to Earth, that is. They say they didn't. I'm not convinced.

I remember her. I remember the feel of her, like silk and ice over my mind, like a veil that shut away the rest of the Unity until I could cope with them, like a whisper telling me I could do it. I remember seeing her, my head in her lap, her face smiling down at me, the green-gold mist of her eyes while she whispered in my mind. I remember loving her, just a little. The relief of her presence, the sheer awe of being that close to another being, to feel another mind wrapped inside my own. I loved her. I did.

Dowling knew it. He knew. He was there, beside me, all the while. The memory is so clear to me, even still. Even against the blur and storm of those days, of the rush of minds against mine. Like a figure backlit against a fog, standing out. Every time I lay there, my head in her lap, he'd be kneeling beside me. His hand always on my chest. The hand I could feel shake. He knew I loved her for what she did for me, what she was for me, and he didn't care. He didn't give a shit. Because she helped me. Because she kept away the Light. Because she made sure that I never suffered what he'd suffered, locked away on Earth where everyone thought him mad, and the Gestalt hammered his mind down to nothing. She kept me from that, and he would have cut out his own heart for her, so long as she did that for me.

I wish I could say ... I wish I could _show_ ... the kind of love I felt for him, back then. The love I feel now, it's as fierce, as deep, every bit as precious, but back then ... he was so old. He was so old, and so fierce, and my mind was split asunder and held together by a woman neither of us knew, and I loved her, but it was nothing, _nothing_ , to how I loved him. The fading tremble of him, the way his hair puffed and billowed like it was in a perpetual wind, the way his eyes used to shine at me like it was the last time he was ever going to see me ... the way we felt that he was dying, the way our time seemed so short, so very short, the way every moment seemed sharp and edged and precious. The way he smiled at her when she shielded me, and whispered wrinkled hands over my nerves and sent me where all the minds in the galaxy couldn't follow ... he was dying and I was breaking, and there are no words in any language for the kind of love we had then. There are no words.

I remember it. I remember every minute, every second. The glow of him, the trembling storm crouched dying at my side. I remember wishing I could trade all the galaxy, all the damn minds that whispered at me in the Light, trade them all and buy him another minute, another day, another year. Just one more. Just to see him there, at my side. Just to see the love in his eyes, and the tremble in his hands.

I'd have done it, too. If I could. Every last one, for one more day. Maybe they knew that. Maybe they could see it. Maybe that's why they gave him the body, why they showed us the change-cradles and the technology needed to siphon a mind, a soul, into a new shell. Maybe that's why they gave Dowling a new form, and let him remain with me that much ... that much longer. I never believed their pretty lies about rewards, about an apology for our suffering. But the threat of my determination, the threat of the korundai we'd become ... that, I could believe. 

Doesn't matter. They gave it to us. They gave us another day, year, century. They gave us that, and it's that memory that keeps me from hating them now. Just. But it does. Because for one more day, for him, for me, for us ...there's nothing I won't give, nothing I won't take. I sold a world, once, for his peace. I'd do it again.

I'd do it again.


	6. Integration (Dowling)

Portion of the Address of Professor Dowling to the Learned Galactic Integration Committee.

Timestamp: 358:291:026

Right then. Presentation to the almighty Galactic Integration Committee. Took you long enough to hear me out, you ignorant bunch of csati. Not that it'll make one scrap of difference.

I'm going to tell you this, on the off-chance that you'll actually listen. I don't think it very likely that you will, but since there is a chance that eventually it will make sense to you, I'll just go ahead anyway. When it gets too much for you, feel free to bugger off again. I've no doubt that's what you intended to do anyway.

My name's Dowling. Professor Dowling, to be proper, though that may not apply anymore. Whatever. I think of myself as Professor, and since I'm doing the talking here, that'll do for you as well. When you start screaming obscenities at me, kindly address them properly. I still won't listen to them, but it prevents hapless bystanders from feeling too oppressed, and it's just common courtesy to keep things correct. Far too many mistakes have been made from mis-labelling something.

Those of you old enough might remember me. I used to be human, before you get confused. Classic human, of the Earth variety. To clarify, because I'm from Earth, 'human' is my catchall term for the non-machine species. That would be you. All clear so far? Good. I'm going to have to explain my terminologies to you as I go, because I'm a machine now, and I can't properly integrate with you lot on a telepathic level anymore. 'Telepathy' meaning the mind-to-mind equation of concepts, without all this messy language crap I'm having to spout at you now. Just bear with me, if you've the patience. I'll explain the whys presently.

The Earth terminologies of Machine and Human arose when Earth humans discovered the process of 'telepathy', as they called it. The simple exercise of mind-to-mind communication allowed concepts and emotions to be broadcast at an elemental level, effectively reducing translation error to next to zero, after the first few years or so of raging war about the blasphemy of it all, and then 30 years where the planet had a literal collective shit-fit and absorbed themselves into a Gestalt. Believe me. I was there

It was a terrible thing, you know. The Gestalt. Most of you won't know what I mean by that. Outside of Earth, most of the Human Unity races were guided into telepathy slowly enough that you never had to endure anything like it. A massive, identity-less distillation of every fledgling telepathic mind on the planet, an instinctive banding-together in the face of the incomprehensible. It scared the hell out of me. Literally scared me right out of my wits.

Didn't last, though. Thirty years on, and maybe the collective consciousness decided it had gotten the hang of things, I don't know. Wasn't part of it. We'll get to that in a minute. But. After those thirty years, and probably more gradually that it looked at the time, Earth humanity decided to distill itself back _out_ of Gestalt. I've ... never been quite sure how it worked, that dissolution. I don't know if identities re-emerged, or if a whole bunch of new identities created themselves out of the mix. I don't really want to know. Gives me the bloody shivers. But the Gestalt surrendered itself to individuality again. Most of it. There's a few patches as didn't, or many they were always somewhat gestalt-ish. 

And in the aftermath, they started to figure a few things out. With a lot, and I mean a _lot_ , of effort, they worked out how to reach out to other thinking beings, all the various and sundry biological 'species' of their planet. It seemed anything that lived, they could reach out to telepathically. With one notable exception.

I am aware that you know all this, yes. I am aware that you are all excellent, well-educated citizens of the modern Galactic Duality, and of course you know that human species cannot integrate with machine species. It is, after all, the basic tenant of our society. Those of you not Earth human have seen the equivalent processes in the histories of your own planets and systems. But none of you know why yet, and I do, so if you want to know, you'll listen. Of course, most of you won't believe me, and a lot of you will force yourselves not to. Humans are made like that, you see.

The thing is, when I first came out here, out among your stars and your societies and all the great bewildering madness of the Duality, I wanted to know _why_ machines and humans couldn't connect. I wanted to know why you were a Duality, instead of a Unity. I wanted, so very much, to know why there were minds out here that I couldn't reach. Why there were minds that I'd never, even in the midst of the Gestalt, been able to reach. I had a reason, the best reason in all the universe, though you won't agree with me on _that_ either, and I wanted to know _why_.

On Earth, we'd thought it was a result of the machines being artificial, not-alive. We know better, now, but back then it seemed a reasonable assumption. Anything organic could be reached telepathically, anything artificial you had to work by proxy language. There was a clear line of demarcation between the two, and that was that. 'Machine' came to mean any thinking entity that was artificially created and incapable of telepathy.

That doesn't work out here, though. Not with the technology you have in the Duality, the technology you had even a hundred years ago when I first clawed my way up off my planet and out among you csati. One of the first things any civilised race looks for, isn't it? The secrets of immortality. Now, with organics and mechanics and even energetics all jumbled together into that heroic mish-mash of parts that we all recognise as the modern approach to physicality, and any set of minds being theoretically capable of inhabiting any set of bodies, thinking that the difference between machines and humans is physical _doesn't work_.

It never really did. But it's stuck around, that myth. Oh yes it has. You like thinking that, don't you, despite the evidence that's been staring you in the face for what, five hundred years now?

I didn't. Never did, never could. Like I said. I had a _reason_. A reason to ask the questions that so few of you want answered, a reason to look for a connection that _none of you want_. Because that's the thing. And you don't know it, you don't even really realise it, but that's the truth of the matter. That's what I found, at the base of it all.

I didn't realise it then, of course. I was just one researcher among dozens, hundreds, if perhaps a little more desperate than most. The Integration Question, that's what you call it. It's become a huge field of study, of course. Divisions always are. No-one cares once something has been proven to be the same. It is always the differences that draw the attention. And I was no different when I entered the field, some ... oh, some 150 years ago, now. Me, on the human side of the line, reaching across the divide towards the machines. Wanting to know why they were kept so bloody far away.

It wasn't easy. It's so difficult even to talk to a machine, out here. The ones from the Unity, that is. The ones who actually _know_ anything. Machines tend to keep to themselves. So do humans. Not through any specific fault of theirs or ours, just a general lack of meaningful communication. Of course, there was always the language option. We've kept a couple of dialects around, mostly the readily pronounceable ones, for machine/human interactions. But when so much of this society is created from telepathic connection, I guess it all just seems like so much _work_. We don't like strangeness, and when it's so hard to talk, why bother making the effort at all?

But I had something most of you don't have. I had some _one_ most of you don't have. A partner, a lifeline, the second half of me. A _machine_. My Isander.

We came out here together, you know. After the Gestalt. We were ... inseparable then. Had to be. Because he'd been the reason I hadn't gone Gestalt. He'd been the reason that I, despite being your typhoid mary, your patient bloody zero, had never become what the rest of my damned planet had. I never dissolved, never lost myself, because he was there. And I held onto him. And when we came out here, when we were thrown out among all this strangeness, I held on all over again.

Not completely, of course. We went our separate ways on and off, to explore our own segments of the Duality, meet those of our 'own kinds', form opinions. We set out to explore, to learn, and we did it separately at first. Easier, wasn't it? Because there were places we weren't welcome. Place in the Human Unity where a machine dare not go, and places in the Machine Unity where a human will never be welcome. We didn't know about your wars. We didn't know how close the Duality had come to never being born, those centuries ago, how close you'd come to destroying each other time and time again. But we figured out the effects of it, oh yes. We figured out right quick that there were places that we could only go individually, and never together.

So we looked. And we learned. And then, on and off, over months and years and _decades_ , we started comparing notes. My partner and I. My _machine_ and I. And when we'd scraped enough of an idea together, when we'd scrounged enough money and enough information to make it viable, we set up the Integration Laboratory. Hell, we made you pay for it. The Galactic Integration Committee. We made you pay for that, all those decades ago.

It's been a hellish long ride, you know, finding the answer to a question that bugger all people actually wanted answered. And of course you know, past a certain point, the quest became quite literally dangerous. Mucking around with people's minds usually is. Looking for the mechanics of telepathy, playing around with virtual reality and the change cradle technologies, with body manufacture and mind-siphoning and all the bloody games we play with mortality and physicality and mentality out here, in this bright new galaxy you pulled us into. Because we thought it was _physical_ , didn't we? We thought there was something somewhere, some fundamental formation at the base of human and machine minds, some remnant of whatever form they'd originally held, that made it so that they couldn't reach towards each other.

There isn't. And oh, look at you lot. Look at the faces you make. Hah. Glad I can dial you out, now. Glad it's not the Gestalt in here. Madness, always madness, you people keep _offering madness to me_. The Gestalt. Integration. Playing games with people's heads, making them think it was always them to start with. Because you want to be bigger, you want to get there first, you want to draw each new world into one or other Unity first. Not outright war. Not anymore. Learned that one, I think. Learned slightly better. But a competition, yes. And one where you don't care overmuch what it costs the little people. The planets in question.

It was never physical. The difference, the barrier. It was _never solid_. Never the titanium thing you pretended it was, never the impossible barrier you've always made it out to be. There is a difference, oh yes. There's a fundamental divide, something that pulls them one way and you another, but it's not insurmountable. It doesn't lie in the mechanics.

It's in their heads. All in their heads. And yours. Trained to dial in to certain wavelengths, trained to instinctively shy away from others. To fumble away from anything that doesn't fall within a certain range of familiarity. They feel different, machines. There's something in them, whether organic, mechanical or energetic, some shape to their thoughts that echoes a commonality among them. Same as humans, all of you, have some threads in common, some shapes that let you know how close you can be.

Did you incite the Gestalt _on purpose_? I wonder sometimes. Got to, haven't I? Have to wonder that. But you don't know, I think. Most of you. You don't even know what I mean. Maybe it's just the ones who send people, then. Just the ones who take people, and touch them, and send them back to spread it out among the people they once belonged to. Maybe just those of you who do the taking. Maybe you know. Maybe you force ... a sense of commonality. So that when those people come out here, when they step out among your bright and wonderous worlds, they'll _know who to talk to_. They'll know who to accept, and who to stay away from. And then they'll belong to you, and not to that other Unity.

It almost killed me, you know. Almost killed me _again_ , trying to bridge the gap between Isander and myself. Cost me my second body, the one you'd given me when I cleared Earth and hit the Duality. My own fault, mostly. Threw myself in, near fried myself experimenting with the change cradles. Almost lost myself altogether, and _did_ lose him for a while. He'd done enough watching me almost kill myself back on Earth. Wasn't able for it out here, too. So he left. For a while, he left.

And when he came back ... 

When he came back, I _didn't care_ anymore. Not what they'd told me on Earth, not what they'd told me out here, not what the Gestalt had trained me to feel and what this entire bloody Duality had taught me could never be changed. I _lost him_ , and then I got him back, and I didn't care if it broke my mind all to pieces once again, I just wanted to touch him. I just wanted to feel him near, to have the one person I actually _wanted_ in my head instead of all those millions that you bunch of csats forced me to embrace. I'd broken before, I'd gone insane before, I'd lost everything that came before the Light _before_. I'd thought I couldn't bear it, not again, but when there's something else, something that matters more ... 

So I touched him. For the same reason I'd pulled back from the Gestalt, the same reason I'd pulled back from _you_ , I reached towards him. Always him. I was so stupid, on Earth. So lost and crazed and stupid. I hadn't even understood what I was feeling. What I'd been made to feel. I didn't know how it worked. And I didn't this time, either, I never have, but insanity wasn't as great a fear, anymore. Almost die a few times, lose something you love a few times, it's not as terrifying.

I was born again, when I touched him. Like I'd been on Earth, a naked man screaming at the Light, locked away for a madman. And he'd found me then, and he found me now, and he _freed_ me, every time. He was like nothing I'd ever felt, and it didn't make sense, so much of him even still doesn't make sense, a shadow on the edge of the connection, something impenetrable that won't resolve between us. But it doesn't matter. Never has. Because when I touched him I felt ...

Mad. Yes. Like madness again, a single instant of clear and perfect insanity. What else do you call it when everything you ever believed is rewritten in a single instant? When everything that makes up your mind is changed? There were things in his head that aren't in human heads, things inside him I didn't understand. Things that have broken minds before, minds you trained to be too rigid, minds you trained not to go beyond certain limits. There've been people killed looking for Integration for reasons other than physical. There have been people broken.

I didn't. Or no more than I already had been, anyway. I've gotten used to the screaming of the Light. Some ideas can only live in minds designed to hold them, or minds used to madness. Custom built, or absolutely fluid. Not that my mind's all that fluid. More like shattered so much it's gaseous now. But that's besides the point.

The point is, I connected. I _integrated_. I touched a machine, allowed that foreign shape of mind to touch my own. And I realised ... why I couldn't before. I realised why none of you, not one, can touch them. Or me, now. I realised when I reached out, when I fell and he caught me, and it was different, it was terrifying, but it was _good_ as well. It was Isander. It had _always been_ Isander.

You meant to make me human. To bring my species out as part of the Human Unity, to make us part of you so firmly it couldn't be changed. But you picked ... I think you picked the wrong man. Right from the start. You picked a weak man, a scared man, a monster too afraid to step into the Light. Someone who'd run ahead of it, and fight it to the very end, and cling to whatever rock could anchor him against it. To whatever _machine_

I gave my world to you. My entire planet, everyone on it. I infected them for you, and brought them out to live among you. But me ... I was never one of you. Never meant to be.

You didn't pick a man. Didn't even pick a machine. You picked a monster, and he fell in love with something he wasn't supposed to, and he chose it over a whole world. He was _chosen_ over a world, chosen right back, no matter how much it cost everyone around us. No matter how much it cost, and always will cost, the two of us to be together. I chose him. I touched him, integrated with him, and I'm always going to. If it comes to him or you, I will _always_ choose him.

So. So that's ... that's it, then. That's what I came here to say. You wanted Integration. Or rather, you wanted to be _seen_ to want Integration. You wanted to be seen to be looking for it, so that this Duality of yours can look like more than two Unities pretending to like each other to avoid the threat of another attempted annihilation. You paid me to go looking for it, in the hopes that I'd never find it. But here it is for you anyway. Here's what I found, and why I went looking, and why I was _able_ to find it.

You can do what you want with it, I think. Won't be much. I can see that already. Those of you that already knew, you don't want this, you went out of your way to avoid it. And those that didn't, most of you are too afraid, or think me too mad, to understand what I'm saying. You won't listen. None of you will. I knew that before I came here, I think.

Doesn't matter to me, though. Won't ever matter to me. I did what you wanted. I gave you a world. And in return, I've _got what I came for_. He was all I ever wanted. He was all I ever loved, while I had mind and memory to love with.

That's all I wanted to say. All you paid me for. I've given, and I've gotten, and that's that.

Good luck with that war you're not fighting, by the way. For my sake, for Isander's, I hope to hell you keep not fighting it.

And for yours, I hope one day you forget why you _wanted_ to.


	7. Memoriam (Isander)

Last, best hope ...

Have I ever told you about the Library? I know I've mentioned the Index, but I'm not sure ... They're planets, you know. Actually, multiple planets. They form a whole system by themselves. The Index is currently weighing in at three celestial bodies, a planet and two moons, with the Library filling another four, three planets and a moon. The only inhabited worlds in-system, with the others left open for future expansion. The system ... the name doesn't translate very well, but the closest might be 'Memoriam'.

Memoriam is the deepest secret of the Machine Unity. No human knows where it is, and I mean _no_ human. Most of their navigation equipment is machine-based, after all. Insentient a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean much. The Memoriam protects itself from their view. In darker times, I'm told, times riding close to the edge of war, the Memoriam was a prize hunted by almost every human agency in the galaxy. The name of every machine in existence, the sum total of our memory and knowledge ... it all rested in the memory of Memoriam. The names in the Index, the lives. And the writings, ideas, thoughts ... everything else, everything that makes us who and what we are ... that rests in the Library. Remembered forever, or as long as the Memoriam can last. What an advantage that would have been, to our enemies. A unique advantage, for the humans have no such repository, no single entity to remember it all. They would have known us in our entirety, and remained secret themselves.

There were talks. Recorded now, perhaps ironically, in the Library, for all to study if they wish. Talks of destroying the Memoriam, when the fear became too much, the threat of annihilation too real. I've listened to them. It was so long ago, millennia, long before the Duality as it is now had emerged. Long before Earth even knew the rest of the galaxy existed. A distant war. One I'm glad, so very glad, that my beloved and I never had to live through. The thoughts of what they would have done to us then, when our people were enemies, the thought of what they would have done to _Dowling_ if he had done then what he did now ... After hearing those recordings, I had nightmares for years, just of the thought of it. A human, who became a machine. They would have ... 

Sometimes, I think we forget, you know. How bad things were, how bad they could still be. All the hate that lives now, the fear and violence, the pain ... once upon a time, it was worse. It was so much worse. Maybe, one day, it will be that bad again, though I hope not. I hope never. But it could be. It might be.

The word _korundai._ The way it's used now, it means abomination, corruption, something filthy. Something worthy of contempt, even hate. But then ... Back then, it meant 'Those Who Destroy'. Back then, to call someone korundai was to name them a threat, not just to life, but to the very reasons for living. Back then, korundai were people to _fear._ People to destroy, to wipe from existence before they could destroy everything you loved. What we were on Earth, maybe. That was korundai as it used to be. Not what we are now, the targets for little petty hatreds and fears. We're no threat, not now. But back then ... back then, we would have been. In every possible way. We would have been.

You know, when a machine enters the Duality, when they become a citizen, they have to undertake a journey. Almost a pilgrimage. To the Memoriam. To the Index, to be made part of the Unity, to be noted down and remembered. But also to the Library. To see. To know. Who we are. What we are. And what went before. And I, much like Dowling on entering the university, I went looking for the machine/human divide. I wanted ... to know what we had to bridge, I suppose, Dowling and I. So I looked. And I saw.

Do you know what they would have done to us, back then? Me, for loving him. Dowling, for ... oh, for everything. For every thought that has ever passed through his mind, I suspect. For the very essence of who he is. To them, he would have been ... they wouldn't have believed him, maybe. Wouldn't even be able to encompass the thought of him. Of us. And me. To imagine me, to imagine a machine who would be willing to even _touch_ such monstrosity, to even be near him, let alone ... oh, we would have been _korundai_ indeed! Destroyers, monsters. Anathema to everything.

Why am I saying this? What's my purpose? But I do have a point. I very much do.

Memoriam. The remembrance of all that has gone before, good and bad, every person, every thought, all equal, all essential. That is what my people built, in Memoriam. Or birthed, maybe, since Library at least is partially sentient. That's what they made. The memory of every glory, every horror, even triumph and mistake. Every idea, every belief. Every person who ever held them, and what happened to them in the end. All of it. It's all there.

That is the hope. That is the one hope I believe in. That knowledge. That memory. And why?

Because through it, I learned what my people once were. I learned what I might have been, once, what might have been done to me and mine. And I learned _why._ And through learning that, through seeing it, feeling it, understanding it ... I learned what I am now. What we are now. I learned why none of the hate they throw at us actually matters, in the end.

Dowling is a machine, now. He is a human, and a machine, and his name rests next to mine in the Index. Our love, our reasons, they rest in the Library, as prominently as any other. And one day, in some distant future, some machine, maybe even some human, on pilgrimage from the Duality, will look at us, will see what we once were, will see who and what and why ... and will learn from it. From us. Not for what we might have said, not for what we might have done. But for who we were. Who we _are._ They will see us, and imagine what they might have been had they lived in our world, and they will understand.

Korundai. Once upon a time, it meant someone who destroys and must be destroyed. Now, it means abomination, someone to hate, someone filthy. One day ... maybe it will mean something else. Something simpler and more true. Something a little like us.

Memoriam is what I hold as the last, best hope, not just for my own race, but for everyone. For all of them. The memories of the past, become the hope for the future. Once upon a time, it was a target. Once upon a time, driven by fear, my people almost destroyed it, almost destroyed their greatest achievement, their best hope.

But they didn't. Even then, even in the time of _korundai,_ when all that existed was hate and fear ... even then, they did not destroy it.

Maybe now, maybe here, they will not destroy us either.


	8. Schism (Isander)

"Tell me. I know you Earthers have this idea about 'love conquers all', but ... don't you think it a bit much to try to apply it to an _object_? I mean, it's a lump of metal! It's not like it _feels._ That's why we can't feel them, not this _teaacti_ you've fed us about not wanting to. Not something in their minds. It's because they don't _have_ minds. They don't have souls. So really, I can't understand why you ...."

The Brovoi trailed off, the spite dying into wary silence. Half the hall trailed off, the university staff, their guests, the machine delegation, all stopping to stare in hushed amazement at the little confrontation by the fountain. I stopped, too, but less from the words, though they hurt. I stopped, because it was the first time in my life that I had felt my beloved angry.

We were still so very new to each other, then. Telepathically. Nearly two centuries together, but in separate minds, until that moment, when I had entered his lab and felt ... something. Touching my heart, my soul, almost bypassing my mind altogether. That moment, when I walked into the room, and felt him. Dowling. My beloved. It had knocked my entire universe sideways, turned it upside-down, and when it settled, he was there. Inside me. Threaded through me, never to be lost again, or so I thought.

There had been some terrible months, following that moment, as the universe realised exactly what my beloved had done, what he had become, and why. Months when the word _korundai_ began to follow us, when disgust and hatred started dogging our footsteps. Months, I'm afraid to say, when we were largely oblivious to it all, drunk on the sensation of holding each other where no other could see, where none could interfere. An obliviousness that came to a screeching halt in the silence following the Brovoi's little speech, as awareness of the stares, the whispers, the disgust and contempt and outright hatred of the gathering pressed home on us. Myself, the first thing I felt was fear. Hurt, but mostly fear.

Dowling? Was furious.

I'd never felt that before. Seen it, yes, once or twice, and it was ever an impressive sight. But to _feel_ it, to feel the bright, red-gold rush of rage shove up from his chest, pushing aside the blue-green of thought and frustration, making his body tremble in fury ... And his expression! It had stopped the Brovoi in its tracks, that expression. Like thunder, like rage, but with such pain strung through it, such old fear ... I was moving towards him instantly, feeling those wounds open behind his anger, feeling the hauntings of past persecution steal forward.

"What did you say?" he whispered, voice hoarse and quiet, a voice that belonged to a body left behind long ago. The voice of a madman.

"I ..." the Brovoi stuttered, suddenly seeming uncertain, nervous. As it bloody should.

"Soulless?" Dowling went on, turning to face the Brovoi properly, solid and trembling. "Mindless? Nothing but a lump of metal?" He said the words quietly, almost tonelessly, and I could see for a moment why that seemed to worry people when I did it. When the rage behind them was so palpable, the lack in the words themselves made them seem like weapons, like blades held out in challenge. "Is that what you think?"

"I ..." And really, the Brovoi should have shut up, then and there. It should never have spoken to start with, but it _needed_ to have shut up there. But it didn't. Instead, it drew itself up, drawing courage from the slight figure my beloved presented, little earth human, madman, _korundai_. Brovoi are large, tempestuous, strong. Dowling ... is not. Not that way. "It is!" it cried, proudly, daring.

It was a stupid mistake.

I'm not sure how to describe what Dowling did then. It's hard to explain, even among telepaths. Because only Dowling could have done it. Only he was psychically both human and machine, though more machine now. To me, he seemed to ... fade ... for a moment. Grow distant inside, his presence becoming foggy and translucent. I realised later he was reaching back to the human he'd been, to the mindset he'd had before he'd smashed his mind open to touch mine. He ... became human again, or closer to it, for a brief second.

Long enough to touch the Brovoi's mind, the mind of every human in the room. Long enough to show them ... something.

They screamed, a few of them. Fainted, too. A mechanical human near me shut himself down in sheer self-defense, blanking his mind completely to avoid whatever my beloved had shown him. The Brovoi, robust and proud as it had been a moment earlier, almost crumpled before my beloved's stare, falling to its belly, staring at Dowling in raw horror, in terror and hatred. I saw it, then. Saw a flash of the hatred that would drive us to our moon, drive us away from civilisation. Saw the murderous intent that some years later would lead to my beloved being slaughtered by a mob on some backwards world. Just for being who he was. Just for showing them what he did.

"Soulless?" he repeated, softly, leaning down to meet the Brovoi's stare nose-to-nose. "You dare think so? You _dare_?" He snarled softly, and he was himself enough that I could feel the bubbling rage inside him, the sheer affront on my behalf, and the dark undercurrent of old pain, of scars torn open to let old hurt ride free to the surface, and I knew then what he must have shown them, or part of it.

There is an old story, from earth. Part of a human religion, I think, though I'm not sure. "Let he who has not sinned, cast the first stone." I think, for that half-second when he made himself human again, my beloved showed them what it meant.

"You know nothing," he said, finally, drawing himself up and away from the Brovoi, looking out over the room with something like sadness. He knew, I think, what he was to them, in that moment. He knew what we were, and what we were always going to be, from that moment on. _Korundai._ Abominations. He knew it, then. That they would never understand, never see what he saw, never know what soul a machine could have. They would never love me, or my kind, the way he did. They would never respect him, not ever again. Not when he was worse than a machine, worse than soulless. He had been human. He had thrown it away. They would never, ever forgive him, for that. All that he said, all that he tried to show them ... it would mean nothing. They would never listen, never see. All his anger, for nothing.

He looked at me, then, and it was the madman who looked out at me, the prisoner, feeling the Gestalt crawl nearer, feeling his enemy close around him. It was Dowling as I'd first known him, helpless and afraid and screaming in the light. And then he held out his hand, reached out to me, and I felt for the first time what I had only seen then. I felt him pull himself together, felt him pull fury and courage and love and stubbornness into his center, remind himself who he was, what he was, what he could do. As I closed my fingers around his, ignoring the stares of hatred, I felt him stand up inside himself, and silently tell the world, the galaxy, to go bugger itself.

He'd given them all he could. He'd told them, shown them, all over again. They hadn't listened. They'd tried their level best to hurt him for daring to show them. So then. They didn't matter. They didn't matter. All that mattered, in that moment, was he and I, and making something worth their hate. Making something beautiful. Something like love.

In that moment, I felt all the passion of the man I love, all the power and trembling of him, turn its back on those people, and turn to me. All that he was, just for me, because they'd thrown it aside all over again, stamped on it because it didn't fit the way they wanted the world to be. I held his heart in mine, the sheer stubborn majesty of it, the pride and courage and gruff caring, and knew that they must be the blindest, most stupid beings I had ever met, to cast aside a gift of that magnitude.

People are idiots, you know that? Human, machine, brovoi, earther, you name it. They're idiots


	9. Judgement

He had to stay on the ship, while Dowling went down to the surface. This planet didn't allow machines to touch the 'sacred soil' of the home world, for all they were content to use them as labour on the moons and colonies. Isander tried not to feel too bitter about that. It was surprisingly easy. But then, he did have bigger things to worry about.

He could feel Dowling, down there, all grump and snark and rapidly rising frustration. His beloved didn't understand why they had asked him here, asked him to explain what he'd done and why, and then refused to listen to him. He'd been talking for more than two hours, now, and pretty much all they'd done was heckle him. Any machine inside of a lightyear had to be feeling Dowling's booming exasperation by this point. Isander certainly was.

But what was more worrying were the snatches of the accusations he was getting through his beloved's thoughts. There were currents here, of more than just intolerance. There was genuine, poisonous hatred in that place, and even Dowling, oblivious man that he was sometimes, was beginning to feel it.

And then someone shouted " _Korundai!_ ", and Isander was running for the shuttle-bay.

He felt his beloved's stunned panic as he negotiated with the ship's captain for an escort, and the shuttle _now please._ He felt Dowling begin to run as they piled in, all human, no machines, because machines weren't permitted on this world, but he really didn't care about that right now, and they were pulling free of the ship as he heard Dowling's first cry of shocked pain. Dimly, he heard himself cry out in sympathy, ignoring the looks he received from the crew, all his focus on {Dowling, beloved, hold on, wait for me ...}

By the time they landed, Dowling was screaming, surrounded and panicked and hazed with agony. Isander was running towards the crowd outside the lecture theater before the others were even unharnessed, hearing the screams out loud, now, hoarse little cries of pain, and Dowling was reaching for him, trying to stand underneath the assault, trying to reach him, and then he was _there_ , and he was furious in a way he had never, ever been, a roaring, pulsing rage that screamed out of him as he literally threw the humans aside, strong as metal, strong as machinery, flinging them out of his way as he ran to Dowling's side ...

His beloved was face-down in mud. One hand was outflung towards him, towards where Dowling had sensed him coming, and that hand was shattered, crushed, covered in blood. Isander felt his soul screaming at the sight, distantly, wrapped in horror and numb agony. Dowling ...

{...'sander ... loved ...}

He had him. He had him, and he was running, and even as he ran he could feel the body in his arms dying, broken past any hope of repair, and there was a soul inside his soul, trickling in, numb and confused and needing, loving, trying without understanding to soothe Isander's panic, whispering in mazed gentility, and Isander thought he had never hated anyone, any creature, as much as he hated the people who'd done this ...

The ship didn't have any human bodies in hold. They were an interior ship, not an exploration ship, so they were only barely ready for an emergency, and the only body they had available was a mechanical shell designed to hold an energetic hybrid. Even as they laid Dowling's shattered form next to it in the change-berths, Isander could feel his beloved shying away from it, climbing further and further into Isander's own soul in revulsion, and with his body minutes from death, Isander knew that Dowling wouldn't survive the change this way, wouldn't be able to hold on ...

{Dowling! In that body now, nownownownow, get in, get in, beloved leave me, get in, you're _dying_ , get in the body or so help me I'll _never forgive you_ ...}

Dowling jumped, startled, stunned, braver than any person Isander had ever met, and he was leaving, climbing into the change back through his own shattered body, strained through the soul-conversion in screaming confusion, parsed into energy for the shell to hold, and then he came online in his new body, came back to the world, and the voicebox in the new form _screamed_ , wrenching cries of absolutely agony and confusion, and Isander was kneeling, was pulling the bulky form to him, pulling them down onto the floor, uncaring for the audience, pushing himself in and around Dowling, wrapping his beloved in as much of his presence as he could bring to bear, whispering, crying, holding as tight as he could, feeling metal screech with the pressure.

{Dowlinglove, haveyou, haveyouDowlinglove, belovedmine, safeheresafe, minesafe, neverhurtagain, haveyou, haveyousafe, loveyoubeloved, loveyoumine, haveyousafe ...}

{Isander'sander, Isanderbeloved, hurtpainconfused, Isandermine, nearhelp, comehelp, loveyoupain, whatwrong?}

{Holdon, haveyoulove, holdon, changesoon, paingone, holdonbeloved, Dowlinglove}

And Dowling stopped screaming, subsiding into shudders of change-reaction, clinging helplessly, but warm and confident inside Isander's mind/soul, hushing, soothing, pushing his own pain back on raw instinct to reach out to his beloved, threading himself through Isander to reassure his beloved that he lived, that he was fine, that Isander needn't worry ...

They got him to a proper change center, got him to a compatible body. Two weeks, that took, while they built the thing. Mechanical hybrid. Not enough time to grow a full organic. Part mechanical, but Dowling never minded that. Dowling never minded a lot of things. Isander did. Isander did.

And while he waited, he thought of that planet, of those people, who had torn Dowling apart for being something they judged evil, who had _killed his beloved_ for no other crime than being the oblivious, loving man that he was. And he promised himself, in the calm darkness of his mind, that they would pay for acting on that judgement.


	10. Lazy Day (Both)

**Lazy Day: Isander**

He poked the protruding toe idly, curiously. Somewhere in the heap of bedclothes, Dowling rumbled at him, but Isander knew the sound enough to know he wasn't actually awake yet. Just complaining on autopilot. He grinned a little, and wiggled his beloved's toe some more. It was a nice toe, as far as such things went. Bit hairy, maybe. Dowling did tend to be hairy when he was organic.

There was a deeper rumble, ending in a sort of coughing grunt, and Isander looked up, grinning, at the bedraggled head that peered out at him. Dowling blinked blearily at him, face scrunched up, creasing deeply around the eyes and mouth. Dowling's bodies were always wrinkled, too. Isander wasn't quite sure why. Maybe it was how he wore them, or how he shaped them, or simply how he was. There was always something ... crinkly ... about Dowling. Even his metal bodies.

"S'time?" Barely even qualified as a mumble, but Isander heard. He always heard, back to the very first. And now, he had the added advantage of feeling his beloved's half-formed thoughts broadcasting muddledly at him.

"Two in the afternoon," he supplied cheerfully. Dowling squinted at him, trying to gauge if he was serious, and flopped back down with a grunt when he realised he was.

"P'ple?" he mumbled from under his arm. _People,_ Isander translated for himself.

"Not a one," he grinned, coming around the bed to sit down with a bounce beside his beloved, smirking as Dowling was tossed up a little, growling incoherently. "Just you and me, beloved. You and me."

Dowling opened an eye at that, at the tone of it, and looked up at Isander's little grin with something approaching sentience. "Yeah?" he rumbled, sleepy and smiling, waking up enough to run a hand lightly over Isander's arm, blunt fingers finding every familiar crease by instinct and habit and love. Isander shivered a little, smiling happily.

"Yes," he answered, automatically correcting, but Dowling only grinned at him. "And I thought that maybe we might head for Westering after breakfast. Lunch. Whatever it is at two in the afternoon."

"Food," Dowling grunted succinctly, sitting up and stretching until his joints popped into place with a series of little clicks and whirrs as his electronics compensated. Isander watched, fascinated, reaching out to run his fingertips over the line of bumps that was Dowling's spine, tracing muscles and bone through the dusky skin. Dowling arced into the touch with a gasp, something clicking out of place, and fell back against Isander's arm with a stunned laugh.

"Warn a csat, you bloody despot you! Warn me!"

"But that wouldn't be any fun," Isander observed with grin, smoothing his face into innocence with the ease of long practice as Dowling glared at him. "Would it?" he asked, standing smoothly. Dowling huffed.

"You and your fun," he grumbled, rolling out the other side of the bed and landing with a thump on the floor, "are going to be the death of me, Isander. The bloody death!" His head poked out of his shirt as he wrestled with it, blue eyes glaring out of a halo of fine silvery hair that drifted idly as Dowling huffed. Isander stared at him, enchanted and amused, torn between laughing and scooping the snarly human up and never letting him go.

So he settled on the perfect compromise and did both, carrying his squirming beloved out to breakfast while Dowling spluttered and yelled and waved naked legs in the air, laughing all the while.

Today was going to be such a good day. He could feel it.

**Lazy Day: Dowling**

The sun hovered somewhere overhead, a haze of heat and gold in the amethyst sky. Dowling wasn't paying it all that much attention, more focused on the delicious warmth of the air, the burnished sheen of Isander's back next to him. His beloved was sprawled out on the deck of the solarium, blissfully drifting, little thoughts tinkering busily away in the back of his devious little mind. Dowling smiled at the feel of them, running a hand gently down the line of Isander's metallic spine, fingers idly exploring the joints and intricate little details of the metal. Isander hummed a little, but made no other move, completely relaxed and too content to care. Though utterly against his initial programming, Isander had taken to decadence with his usual thorough flare. The thought made Dowling laugh, a little.

As for himself, he was as content and more. The air was warm and heavy and purple-gold, so different from anything there had been on Earth, and all the better for it. The plants of the solarium were almost universally alien to him. He hadn't the first clue what they were, and he liked it that way. This wasn't Earth. It wasn't anything close to Earth.

This, was home. Their little solarium, in their little house and lab, on their little moon around their little star. A place just for them. And today, this little day, there was no-one dropping by, no messages beeping angrily at either of them, no damned reporters contriving to make him burst a blood vessel. No-one. No-one at all. Just himself and Isander, and the sun, and the plants, and the warm purple sky.

Smiling softly to himself, he rolled onto his side, tilting his head to look down at Isander's gleaming face, at the faint glimmer of light behind his beloved's slitted eyes. His fingers walked up as if of their own will to touch that metallic cheek, curl around that mechanical jaw, feather soft as air over the expressive, segmented curve of Isander's sarcastic eyebrows. He bit his lip, smiling still, letting his fingertips roam where they pleased on that beloved face, feeling the honeyed curl of Isander's appreciation in his soul. Isander didn't move, content to let him study, let him explore, his mind curling around Dowling's in fascinated adoration and a wisp of wry amusement. Dowling grinned, a brazen flash of joy, and the sun flashed gold as Isander shifted his head to glare lovingly at him.

"Love you," Dowling whispered, soft and dreaming, and Isander smiled in the sunshine.

"Love you too, crazy man. Love you too."

It was then that Dowling decided that lazy days were the best days of all.


	11. Blackout

The power went out. It took a second for that to register, given that both he and Isander were somewhat ... occupied ... at the time. The power went out. Everything went dark, everything went suddenly silent, and for a second Dowling wondered if his beloved had snuck a crest up on him, but no. He wasn't close to that yet, and the blackness remained, lit only by the quiet glow of Isander's eyes and the luminescence of the soft-metals in his chest cavity. Dowling blinked a bit, waiting for the pleasure to edge back long enough for his brain to boot up, and then froze.

The power went out. Except the power _never_ went out. They had about sixteen back-ups in place, for phranti's sake! The power _couldn't_ go out.

Not unless someone went to the trouble to _make_ it.

{Beloved?} A faint hum of connection, Isander soft and whispering in his mind, and already their fingers were fumbling quietly together over his exposed interior, sealing the plating back up, Dowling's frantic, Isander's more controlled but no less rushed. {Where are they, Dowling?}

{Node. Have to cut the node, to get the first three back-ups down. Bloody hell, 'sander, they're in our bloody _home!_ } In their home, on their damned moon. In their _home._ Revulsion and fury clawed up his throat, fighting to cover the old, old fears. In the darkness, Isander's cooling fingers reached out to cup his cheek for a brief moment, unerring comfort, his beloved knowing exactly where he was, a presence as much part of him as anything.

{I know, beloved,} he sent, chill fury. {I know. And they will _pay_ for it!} And though he shivered with it, Dowling had never been so happy to feel his beloved's anger. Anger covered a multitude of fears, and in that moment, all of his were clamouring desperately for attention he couldn't afford to give them.

They scrambled to their feet, moving in unison, still more than half-melded from their loving, bodies moving according to joint will more than independent thought. Didn't matter. In this, they were perfectly in accord, practice honed over long years. When in danger, the first thing they both knew to do.

Run.

It was loud. Isander wasn't meant for stealth, never had been, and Dowling had always been clumsy in fear. But it was fast, too, and directed by a great deal more knowledge than whoever hunted them in the dark. This was their home, after all. And as they ran, Isander reached out to the few semi-aware machines they shared their moon with, sleepy, automated things that nevertheless were about to prove very, very useful indeed. For his part, Dowling dropped his mind back to that fuzzy half-place between machine and human, and let it loose, just a little. Didn't have to be far. Since the Gestalt, the Light was always there. It would never fully leave.

{Five, beloved,} he sent, skidding around a corner. {Human. All behind, near the ship port.} He stopped, gagged, fear sliding slippery inside his mind, reeling away from the hammer of their thoughts, from the blaze of hate inside the Light, and on sheer instinct he slammed back into machine-thought, cutting off the sensation, slipping back into Isander's mind like it was the only safe place in existence. Mostly because it was, for him. {Hell. Damn buggering phranti, 'sander, they want ...} He cut off, on the edge of screaming, and felt Isander curl around his mind, felt his beloved grab him and hold him and keep him back from the abyss, from the terror that begged leave to curl on the floor and scream.

{Doesn't matter, beloved. Dowlinglove, doesn't matter.} Fierce, in his mind. Furious. Gentle. {Never touch you, touch us. _Never!_ } The thought rolled like liquid fury, like white fire, and Isander activated the sleeping-'chines, one quick, clear call of waking, and the night lit up once more, a white haze spreading, a ringing in the ears, and Dowling felt his augments compensate, felt Isander's systems click to counter. Their own programming, this. Poison and antidote. A trap. This was their home, yes. But they had been running for a very long time.

Gasping as they rolled sideways, balance swerving even with the defenses, Dowling struggled to pull some courage back together, pull up some shreds of will long enough to let himself feel the Light again, let himself look for them. Isander helped him, as much as he could, knowing that as soon as Dowling slipped back towards human his own presence would fade. Like a letting-go, like a farewell, every time. It scared the shit out of him. Scared him more than dying, more than the cradles, more than the Light. Isander faded, and he wanted to scream. But he found them. He found them failing, found them reeling, hate falling away, lost to confusion, then haze, then rolling blackness. Little bursts of pain, as they hit the ground, but he only barely registered them, already running again, back to machine, back to Isander.

{Down! Downdowndown, 'sander, they're down! Got 'em! Got 'em!} And then Isander was turning, catching him by the arm, pulling him along as he ran back the way they'd come, back towards the enemy, and now Isander was _furious._ Now he was incandescent. Now there was no danger, and he was in the mood to _kill_! Dowling gasped, reeling along behind, fear clamouring still, and then they were on the first of them, the first intruders. Two bodies in the hall, bare outlines in the glare of Isander's eyes as the pair of them skidded to a halt above them.

Brovoi. They were Brovoi. Dowling felt sick.

{Why?} he whispered. {Dammit, Isander. Why?} The slippery edge of memory crept forward, the thoughts he had touched so briefly, so lurid in the Light, and he closed his eyes, latching onto Isander's arm, hybrid hands clamping down with more strength that organics should really have, but Isander didn't complain. Didn't make a sound, just pulled him close, pulled him in. Metal dented, and stained a little with blood from desperate fingers.

{Don't know, love. Don't know. Don't care. Don't _care_!} But the vehemence was ebbing, something older taking its place. Something tired. Damn them anyway. This was supposed to be their _home._ {What the hell do we do now, Dowling? What the hell do we do now?} He'd never heard Isander so tired. Not even on Earth, not even at the last. Damn it all anyway. How many times were the _kratchjec vudjai_ going to make them run?

No more, he decided suddenly. No bloody more. He turned to his beloved, fierce in the blackness, and he knew Isander could see him, knew too that even if he couldn't he'd still know, still feel. Feel Dowling's rage, his sudden white determination. He'd been running all his life, Dowling, and he was good at it. But push came to shove, he was also the damned stubbornest csat going, and it was high time they told the galaxy to _sod the hell off!_

{We get the power up,} he sent, quietly. {We get these _kratchjec vudjai_ off our moon, we get the power up, and we get the sleepers active. _All_ of them. And then ... we go Memoriam. We go invisible, undetectable, and damn well pissed off! And _then_ we show them what the hell _korundai_ means!}

They'd been learning a long time. Gestalt, Memoriam, Integration. Earth, Duality. 300 years. Learning about running and fighting and fearing. Learning about building, and hiding, and breaking until they couldn't be broken anymore. They'd learned that they could destroy worlds if they had to, let whole civilisations fall, just to keep each other safe. They'd learned that galaxies could go hang, just for one more day together. Learning to be abominations. They'd learned all that. And now, Dowling was just about ready to let all that learning loose. To _use_ it.

Isander stared at him, his mind suddenly hazy around the edges in shock, sheer disbelief. Never before, Dowling knew. Never before had he been the one to fight, to strike. Never before had the grudge been his. But then ... they'd never come to his home, before. He'd never _had_ a home, before. Everything just a step along the road, from that first moment in the Asylum when he knew this robot, this man, was his destiny. Everything just a way to survive and touch his beloved, in all the ways that mattered, until they could just go away together, just _be._ And for a little while, for these last few years ... he'd had that. He'd Isander, in every and all ways. He'd had a home to share with him, a place to be away from them all and just love. He'd had it, and he'd loved it.

And now, the damned galaxy had taken that. Had decided not to let them alone. Had _hunted_ them, had hurt them. Had made Isander tired, had made Isander old. Had come to their own home, their _home,_ and hunted them in the dark. Well, _bugger that._ Just bugger it. Dowling had destroyed a world just by running away, once upon a time. Isander had broken a planet with a word in the right ear, in one moment of fury. Did these bloody _kratchjec vudjai_ really think they could hound _korundai_ without cost?

{Isander. Beloved. I've had enough. I've had bloody enough. They don't touch us again. They don't _touch_ us!}

And then, in the darkness of their breached fortress, in the blackness of their home, Isander nodded. And smiled. That old, cold smile, the smile of an object become a person despite all wishes, the smile of a jailor freeing his prisoner, the smile of a lover avenging his fallen mate. Isander's smile, from all the black times in their lives. And damn if it wasn't the most beautiful thing Dowling had ever seen.

{No,} Isander purred, cool and burning in his soul. {No, they do not. Not again. Never again. Dowling, beloved. They do not touch us again.}

Never, not ever, again.


End file.
